


Family Tetraptych

by Vehemency



Category: Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Child Death, Drukhari | Dark Eldar (Warhammer 40.000), Family Drama, Family Issues, Gen, Kinda, Original Character(s), Resurrection, There are no family counselors in the grimdark future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28536603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vehemency/pseuds/Vehemency
Summary: The Drusidhe family is few and forlorn. Their wicked black hearts only contain a bleak warmth for each other and terrible loathing for all else.
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

It had been a wonderful day. He left the sculpting room with its choking chlorine scent being quickly replaced with the pleasantly floral aroma of star-blooms. They clustered thickly upon the hallway’s ceiling in a specially made mat of writhing nutritional dermaplastic.  


The various filters within the mask he wore could filter out any scent and replace it with various narcotics but Vitiron enjoyed experiencing some of his more personal experiments without a barrier. Flowers had always been a theme in his art, and now had become a recurring concept of his science as well.  


As his old master had said, art is as much science as science is art. The old cretin had been committed to his ideals to an astonishing degree, so Vitiron had ensured he would continue to uphold such in death as well. He turned in the hallway down another corridor, lit up by swirls of glowing thread that criss-crossed over the ceiling and walls. He reached out to caress a few of the threads, which in truth were the veins of his master having long since been emptied of blood and replaced with an interesting combination of fungi and bacteria to produce such a light.  


Further he moved, slithering atop a specially cloned and redesigned spinal column meant to keep his pale feet from touching the ground. Unlike some of his fellows however, the extra length of spine could be easily slipped off in case he did desire to allow the ground the grace of his skin’s touch.  


One of his complaints about the spinal-tail however was the occasional obnoxious grating and scratching noise it would make on some surfaces as he moved over it. He turned his head back to look upon the thick white spine with a frown when a voice brought his attention back ahead of him.  


“M-Master Vitiron!” It was a wrack, a hilariously wasp-waisted one who was still adjusting to a new set of hands and an entirely new ribcage that had seven bone-hooks jutting out from his back at strange angles. He seemed unwieldy in his gait as he wobbled towards Vitiron, wringing thick fingered burnt hands in concern. He cowered as Vitiron approached and moved against the wall.  


“What is it, Merlick?” Vitiron asked, hoarse voice amplified by the mask.  


“Gracious S-sir, there are… there are guests here. For you.”  


“Are they archons?”  


“No.”  


“Are they covenmates of mine?”  


“No, master.”  


“Then throw them out,” Vitiron snapped. Merlick nearly toppled over himself and Vitiron took some pleasure from the wrack’s fear. Yet the wrack did not immediately depart to relay his orders. Instead he fidgeted. Vitiron leaned forward so his head was close to the empty black-iron mask of the wrack. “There is something you are not telling me, Merlick. What is it you are hiding from me?”  
“It is your grandson, and he… he brought guests with him. Jesters.”  


Vitiron frowned, “ugh, what has that stupid boy gotten himself into this time?” He grumbled. What sort of disaster had he embarked on that summoned the Harlequins of all people? 

The merry band of unwelcome guests waited in one of Vitiron’s galleries. The gaily colored Harlequins, of which he counted six but the baffling of various sensors within his domain suggested to him there were far more in hiding, clashed terribly with the onyx and obsidian colored sculptures and paintings. He had been in something of a tenebrous phase when he had decorated the gallery and still rather enjoyed the subtle shifts of different patches of darkness.  


His grandson stood in the middle, a pale wight whose despairing grief was palpable on the tongue and nearly made Vitiron swoon. But he kept his composure and instead moved spindly hands to rest on his hips. His grandson was normally a strapping androgyne of a lad, with a face permanently wrought in beautifully delicate contempt for everyone as was normal for any Trueborn, regardless of whom their father was. But right now he looked mad, bruised, a bright light of lunacy in his eyes as he clutched a colorful little box to his chest as though it were the only thing between him and death. His spiritstone’s dim amber light was smothered beneath the wood.  


The box reeked of blood and spoiling meat.  


“To what do I owe this displeasure? I highly doubt my grandson’s little cuts and bruises are enough to bring you lot here.” Vitiron’s voice was naked in its irritation.  


One of the clowns, with a silvered mask and bells on her toes, bounced up to him with her arms held out. “Oh grand Master of the Arts, we have come to beseech your aid.”  


“You can’t have it,” he replied.  


“Oh but this is not us asking for your help. This is a… family matter.” The Harlequin gestured back to Rideric, specifically, the box he clutched. Another Harlequin moved to take the box and nearly had his throat sliced open, the quick glint of silver in Rideric’s hand the only warning that allowed the jester to keep his blood firmly in his body.  


Vitiron looked at Rideric, “my child, what is so precious inside of there?” He felt something akin to the shadow of sympathy for him.  


“Her,” Rideric answered quietly as though he struggled to handle the weight of the word on his tongue.  


“Who? I cannot read minds, you know. I am not your father, after all.”  


“Why, his daughter, Master Vitiron,” the shadowseer chirped.  


Vitiron blinked in surprise. He did not know Rideric had another child, after the loss of Setanta he genuinely expected his grandson to never have a child again. Such was the price of staying out of touch, he thought. “Give me the box.”  


“Save her,” Rideric whispered, unmoving.  


“Do not make demands of me, boy,” even as he spoke he was quickly reactivating old discipline protocols. Subtle twitches of facial muscles and the implants in his brain allowed him quick access to a plethora of protocols and systems that riddled both his lair and his numerous clients… and family. “Give me the box.”  


Rideric gingerly walked towards him and held out the box. Vitiron took it and opened its top. Inside was cool, preserving the mess inside to some degree. He could see muscle tissue, a bit of lung, hair, shards of bone, and a single silvery eye that still had a piece of its nerve attached. Just from the scent alone he could tell it had at one point belonged to a human.  


“Honestly I am not sure what you expect me to do. Such a small flickerlight is hardly going to withstand the Sea for long, and it seems from the texture of this… offal… that she’s been deceased for longer than most would dare wait to resurrect one of our own.”  


“Ah!” The shadowseer clapped her hands, jingling yet more bells on her person somewhere. “But great Master of the Arts, we did not come with the corporeal remains alone!” She swept one arm out towards a pair of harlequins who stood on either side of a draped… sculpture of some sort. Vitiron had no idea how they had managed to sneak such into his gallery and made note to introduce more safeguards against such clownery. “Behold!” She declared grandly. The two other harlequins pulled away the fabric to reveal what for all intents and purposes looked like a blue spun-glass statue with a few small jewels laced around it with ribbons. It was small, with frail limbs reaching outwards as though to grasp something. A child.  


It pulsed with a barely restrained energy. Like a massive tide kept back only with a thin wall of glass. Vitiron felt simultaneously drawn and repulsed by it. Something was crawling around the barriers of his mind. The temperature of his gallery was growing colder by the moment.  


His mind raced quickly to the conclusion. It was rare to get samples, rarer still to get samples without retribution, but he knew what he was looking at. The crystalline lattice that held the dead, sheltering the living. The very soul of a Craftworld.  


He immediately began considering all the applications that the substance could be put to, but then he recalled that the shadowseer had said this was a family matter.  


“...She is… in here?” He pointed at the girl-shaped Infinity Circuit.  


“For now, yes,” the shadowseer nodded. “But she is not supposed to be in there. It is not her time to join them. One play ends, another begins.”  


“Ah,” Vitiron nodded. “You’ve lost another child, grandson.” He turned to look at Rideric who was focusing on the statue as though it might suddenly run towards him with those outstretched arms. He understood that gaze. “At your age, I would expect a better grasp of how to avoid an early demise for children. But perhaps you did not want Setanta to be alone-?”  


Rideric shrieked in grieving rage and lunged.  


Vitiron sighed, and Rideric’s lunge fell a foot before him. Rideric curled on the ground in agony as every nerve in his body was filled with pain from the numerous implants inside of him. A useful thing Vitiron discovered while much younger was how much the True Kin had come to rely on cybernetics to replace their lost psychic ‘limb’. Vitiron watched in passionate interest as his grandson’s arrogant willpower granted him enough strength to plant both hands on the ground and push himself up. It was a heroic effort. “Stay down, boy,” Vitiron commanded, and he watched as his grandson’s pores welled up with blood and every orifice poured with the sticky red liquid, spreading out rapidly on the floor.  


“I. Hate. You.” Rideric managed to gurgle as he curled for a moment into a bone cracking reversed fetal position.  


“And yet, we are family,” Vitiron slowly lowered himself to the ground so he could grab his grandson’s chin with his free hand. He studied his face. The agony on it did not dim Rideric’s eyes one bit. Vitiron loved his grandson deeply, especially during these times where his anguish stirred his long dead affections. “We are family, and that is why I shall help you. It would not be fair if my great-grandchild must suffer due to your stupidity and disobedience.”  


Rideric weakly reached a hand up to grip Vitiron’s wrist. At any other time, Rideric could have crushed the bones within like talc, but with every nerve ending currently suffering induced pain, Vitiron thought it was something of a minor miracle he was moving at all. Vitiron moved his arm away and looked back at the harlequins. “Well?” He asked. They were simply watching. Doing nothing as Rideric bled and drooled and frothed on the floor.  


“Well?” The shadowseer echoed.  


“What is the catch?” Vitiron stated simply.  


“Oh!” The shadowseer clapped her hands. “Yes! We have a slight… issue. You see, the souls within are rather angry. They do not understand what has been done to save them and bring the skein to more fortunate paths. They live in a world of shadows.” She gave an exaggerated shake of her head. “All they see is an invasive presence, and are going to deal with it accordingly.”  


Vitiron pursed his lips, “so a time limit?”  


“Of a sorts, yes,” the shadowseer nodded. “We do not know how long that time limit is, however.”  


Vitiron approached the statue as close as he dared without proper precautions to look upon it. He could see now that the jewels strung around it were in fact cleverly made suppressors, likely the only things keeping his lair from being torn into the void in fact. “Hm, so the question is how to extract the soul and keep it safe in the interim while a new body is made.”  


“Correct!” The shadowseer clapped again, jingling a little.  


Vitiron eyed the blank mirror masked thing with disdain. He disliked overly cryptic people, it was one of the many reasons he had despised Rideric’s father, and experience told him that the harlequins were not being entirely forthright with their intentions. Riddlesmiths and pompous enigmas all of them, he felt.  


“I would need a catalyst,” Vitiron observed idly. "A powerful one, at that." A tug on his leather smock. He looked down to see that Rideric had managed to drag himself over to where Vitiron stood, wheezing as though his lungs were collapsing. “What is it, child?”  


Rideric’s blood coated hand held up an amber stone. Vitiron blinked in mild surprise and some tiny amount of discomfort he quickly dissected. A spiritstone was not easy to acquire, and for the stunted kin aboard Craftworlds was the only thing that was between them and damnation. Rather than just not die at all they preferred the liminal existence within an Infinity Circuit. Rideric, for all his headstrong stupidity, was still family and it had been some amount of assurance to Vitiron that he did not need to worry overmuch about resurrecting him should he die on some ill-thought misadventure to keep him from Her bowels.  


“Take it,” Rideric demanded. His face was a mask of vivid red, even his eyes seemed to have been coated in it.  


“Stupid boy,” Vitiron hissed.  


Rideric did not speak, although it was not because he did not try. When he opened his mouth, a mixture of blood and torn esophagus tissue splattered on the ground. But his eyes remained locked on Vitiron. He still held the soulstone up even as the skin on his fingers began to split. Vitiron realized that the various subdermal implants that stimulated the nerves had likely gotten a bit frayed and damaged since Rideric had last submitted himself to his grandfather’s tender care. Some part of him was fascinated as the horrifically overstimulated flesh fought against both itself and the cybernetics within.  


“You know the cost,” Vitiron took the gem into his long hands, blood dappling both fingers and jewel. It felt warm in his hand, not from the blood but from something deeper within. With a subtle twitch of his lower-left eyelid, the artificial pain nerves stopped their phantom signals and Rideric collapsed back into a wheezing bloodied heap. “...There is much more of me in you than you would like to admit, isn’t there?” Vitiron said. “And yet… you persisted in denying such. Such a shame you’ve come back to me in such dire straits.”  


“Hate… you…”  


“And I love you too, my dear grandchild.” Vitiron turned to address the harlequins but found they had somehow fled without attracting notice. He grinded his teeth in displeasure. There were a few more suppressors on the statue than he remembered as well.  


He turned his head towards the entrance of the gallery, where his wracks had nervously clustered like scared small children. “Merlick!” He called out.  


Merlick hobbled forward first, bowing as much as his altered physiology would allow him. “What do you require of me, Master?” Merlick’s immediate subordinates followed him, keeping a respectful distance from the more experienced wrack.  


“Take this,” he gestured to the statue, “to the Silent Chamber. Use the gruamach wraithbone locks.” He ignored the terror from Merlick. The Silent Chamber was not a place one went easily to, and many of the more esoteric creations that he had made and ‘inherited’ were kept safely within. Where the shackled solemence of the ancient nights ensured even daemons would hesitate to tread.  


Then he looked at another group of wracks who still hung around the entryway. “And you all! Take my grandson and bring him to the lower labs, get rid of that mess of bruised skin on his body and replace it. Maybe he can think about proper etiquette while his eyelids are being flensed.”  


Rideric was still on the ground but had regained enough energy to drag himself on deteriorating fingers towards the statue, hissing like an animal at Merlick. The other wracks fell upon him like carrion crows and Vitiron watched as his grandson was heaved away with all the ceremony of a sack of old tubers.  


“Perhaps I had been a little overzealous,” Vitiron observed idly at the pieces of flesh on the blood smeared floor. “But I doubt he’ll learn regardless,” he sighed. “What an idiot child he is.” But Vitiron understood such idiocy. He too, long ago, had been despairing and just as mad. Yet the old haemonculus liked to think he would have been better behaved around his elders.  


But he was still family, and Vitiron’s dark affections were as bottomless as the hole in his soul.


	2. Chapter 2

If anyone thought the Drukhari specialized exclusively in night-colored metal and child flesh draperies then they would be very disappointed by the various designs of resurrection sarcophagi and the rooms they were held in. 

While some haemonculi preferred abattoir-like aesthetics for even their most highly paying clients (who could not afford their own private rooms to resurrect in), others went the opposite direction and took inspiration from ancient aeldari bathhouses and decadent frescos.

The chamber was large, the walls painted a pleasing cream color that warm light filtered over. The kind that would be only slightly painful to the skinless wretches that still twitched and healed in crystal hewn sarcophagi hoisted high towards the ceiling where the wan lights were strongest. Other caskets were at various positions on the wall, slowly moving downwards towards the ground as muscle knitted over gummy bones that hardened while flesh spread like a mat of pale fungi over the squirming bodies. On the floor were more sarcophagi, some were opened with near fully recovered drukhari basking in the pleasing amniotic bath of stimulants and the subtle waves of agony from others as their bodies took the final steps to full health. A spa, in any other word. Although most spas did not have fully armored bodyguards standing at the side of half-naked people sitting in tubs of drugs and fluids.

Periodically the lights would descend, revealing a tube-like structure where hundreds of hand-selected slaves clustered tightly together writhed in perpetual agony from a myriad of devices embedded into their flesh and bones. A flock of wracks would hurry over to pull free any slaves that had expired and insert new ones wailing for mercy or death. It was always a good show for all involved that actually mattered.

It had happened three times since he had been put into an unoccupied casket to regrow his flesh. Exposed shredded muscle tissue, still bloodied from every old implant being methodically pulled out using pliers and replaced with brand new and allegedly improved implants, had seethed and bubbled as the fluid seeped over and within. His lungs had cried out in anguish for air, even as liquid ventilation took over. His first gasp of gaseous air long afterwards left him light-headed for hours.

Now he sat in the amniotic broth, a strange viscous substance that clung to his skin and what had grown back of his hair. He gave a disgruntled sigh as he ran his free hand through the clotty black locks. They were just at that length where they started brushing his shoulders giving the constant feeling of some sort of little bugs landing on him. His other hand clasped a bone-pipe kindly donated from the body of some mon’keigh gene-twisted mockery of a ‘hero’. The pride and despair of its original owner still suffused the pipe and leant a pleasing floral note to the icedust inside. He idly ran a finger over the slimy tubing that plunged into his jugular, which ensured he had a nice flow of calming narcotics and dissolved nutrition flowing into his body.

As nice as it was, his mind was elsewhere. He was imagining little hands tugging on him, and a soft tiny voice happily chattering away. The warm slow beat of a heart against his own quick drum.

The shattered hole in his soul far outstripped the gnawing upon it by Her.

He wanted her back. It was a terrible and deep desire that clawed around in his chest like a fierce wounded beast. Sometimes he would wrap his arms around his chest tightly until his ribs hurt to contain himself. Pain was a distraction but it was not enough to take his thoughts away from his failure and guilt. 

She had been right there, in a moment he remembered with terrifying clarity. Bloodied, bruised, she had been reaching up for him and telling him she was seeing a garden of stars when her mortal form was torn to pieces and all that was left was the parasitic Infinity Circuit that had used her as a vessel.

That was all she had been, after all. That was the fate weaved for her before even he was born. She had been given life simply to die for the sake of the hateful dead.

Rideric was unsure if it was better to laugh or cry in his furious grief. 

He was quiet however. Despite how much he wanted to dig his fingers into his new flesh and tear at it. He could feel the eyes of others upon him just as much as his own gaze was turned on them. They were sizing him up. Not an archon, not a dracon, nor a haemonculus, he lacked wings so he certainly was no form of scourge and everyone knew hellions tended to be too poor to afford even cloned limbs much less a full treatment at the hands of a flesh sculptor.

Rideric did not announce his name or give any indication who he was. Outside of Taniren slipping in to give him a few personal effects, he had otherwise been alone. No bodyguards, no random courtesan visits. Nothing but himself and his writhing soul.

He leaned back in the casket, the sloshing liquid moving slowly around him. Placing his pipe back to his lips he heard the loud staccato clicking of the entrance to the room opening up. Heads turned to look at the newcomer but then quickly turned away when it turned out to just be a group of wracks and a kabalite.

The wracks immediately scattered off to one drukhari woman who was surrounded on all sides by green painted incubi. They closed in around their mistress in a formation he thought looked particularly sloppy before she waved them off and immediately began complaining to the wracks as they started helping her out of the coffin shaped tank, disconnecting tubes from her rather robust form. Then she immediately started arguing with one of her incubi about… Rideric focused his hearing on it. Hair products? There was a ringing noise as the woman slapped the incubus with a surprising amount of force for someone fresh out of recovery. 

The kabalite stood at the entrance, blue-eyed helmet scanning the room before it settled on looking at him. Rideric looked at it, drawing in a cold breath of icedust and letting the wispy cyan smoke drift upwards from his mouth.

A long pause and then the kabalite began to walk towards him with sure light steps. There was a slight sway in their movement like a relaxed feline creeping towards a familiar face.

Rideric’s lips parted for a moment as the kabalite stood beside him. Were it not for the tube stuck into his jugular he would have stood up. Luckily the kabalite moved to take a seat on edge of the casket and held out a hand. He took it in his own and kissed the top of it, his eyes on the blue lenses above. “Mother.”

There was a soft exhale, and she reached up to pull the helmet off her head. Beneath was a gauzy dream of a woman. Short tawny hair in soft waves, long thin eyebrows, kohl lined blue eyes with dark eyelashes, and a delicate vivid red bow of a mouth. She stared at him for a moment, before she moved both hands to clasp his face. “Oh, my little prince!” She cried softly. “I heard about what happened, but when I first came, your grandsire turned me away and said you were not taking visitors.”

“Because he had me _skinned_ , mother,” he answered. “Nobody’s in much of a mood to take visitors when their muscles are exposed.”

She leaned closer. She smelled like sap and flowers. Her hands moved from his face, down to his neck, over his shoulders and then slowly down his chest. His mother’s gaze remained firmly on his face however. “...It’s gone,” she breathed after a long moment.

“What is gone?”

“Do you feel it now?” She continued with a frown. She moved one hand to rest over his heart. “Is She eating away at you?”

“She waits either way,” he answered, taking her hand again to squeeze the gauntlet gently. “It’s being put to a much better use than protecting my dark little soul.” 

His mother looked down into the murky fluid. “I heard. I saw. Vitiron is busy working on the second stage of the transference, or so he says.”

“Second…?”

She gave a somewhat helpless shrug, “I only understand about as much as you likely do, my child. He said as soon as he had pulled the soul free of its first prison, the harlequins made off with said prison and left him with no suggestions on how to move the soul out of the soulstone safely. Ah-...” She wiped his chin and he realized he had been biting his lip to stifle any words as his heart stirred with rage and despair. He idly licked the remaining blood off his lip and made a face. Tart. “He is working on another way, although it might take some time. Trust me, once he puts his mind to something he’ll pursue it to the end of the Great Wheel if he has to.”

His eyes burned. He blinked as his vision became smudged. “She needs to be back now,” he murmured, as his heart swarmed with hungry worms.

“You’re sounding like a proper Trueborn again!” His mother weakly laughed. She took his hand with both of her own. “Trust me, she will return to you whole and alive. You just need to be patient. Your father taught me that much.”

Rideric felt a twist in his chest. His father, Aos, was behind much of the current situation however faintly now that he was long dead. A desperate gambit to save an ungrateful craftworld, sacrificing his own grandchild and throwing his son towards the fire. Yet he could not find it in himself to actually hate him.

Which frustrated him in that he was even denied anger at the cause of it all. There was nothing he could do or say to hasten his daughters’ return or avenge her and himself on someone who had been devoured ages ago by She Who Thirsts.

His eyes glanced back at his mother, a question on his soul. He looked away towards the wall and let the question fall away. 

“Come back home, my darling prince,” his mother leaned towards him. “If only for a short time. You aren’t planning to hang in your grandfather’s labs and galleries the entire time are you?” She asked, there was a softness in her eyes as she stroked his face. 

“No, I’m not,” he muttered. 

“I have a tower ready for you,” she whispered. “It has a view of the gardens and the suns do not shine too brightly through the windows. It’ll be lovely to have you home for a spell.”

“Mm,” he placed his hands atop her own to gently take them from his face. “Of course mother, but I do have a question.”

“What is it?”

“The armor. This is the most I have ever seen you in,” Rideric idly mentioned. Seeing a Succubus in public covered up to her neck was a rare sight.

Jedza sighed wearily, “oh I’m just trying to avoid some over exuberant fans. Ever since Lelith left, every wych cult has seen a sudden increase of patronage and…” she paused as though searching for the word. “...Devotees. I wanted to visit you without having to toss them off my venom again.”

“ _Again_ …?”

“It’s a long story, but please! Will you come home, Rideric?” She asked, hopeful.

“Well I don’t intend on crawling into some hovel in Metzuh tier,” he answered. “How many gates did you need to come through to reach here?” He asked. Distance was a fickle thing in Commorragh at the best of times, and the latest upheavals have left it scrimshawed. But using the amount of gates one had to pass through to reach a certain tier was one of the few ways one could measure such a nebulous concept. 

“Only three, and the first one is basically a knife toss from my arena,” Jedza said as she started stroking his wet hair. “You won’t be far. We can see her when we want to, you and I. The family together, however many pieces it may be missing.” She blinked, and Rideric watched a few tiny tears escape her eyes. Abruptly she stood up and looked at a nearby wrack. “You,” she hissed in a voice like sweet acid. The wrack nearly dropped a rather ugly looking collection of tubing it had been fiddling with in shock.

“Yes?” The voice was pitched, trembling. 

“Come here and help my son,” she said. “And make it quick. I’m not a very patient woman.”


	3. Chapter 3

Her hand rested on his head, fingers slipping slightly into the still slightly wet black hair. He had managed to walk out of the dark recesses of the haemonculus’ lair with his head held high and to her venom before he had abruptly collapsed on its small deck. Rather than rouse him, she instead sat down beside him and pulled his head into her lap while ordering the terrified pilot to take them back home. 

He used to be smaller.

Jedza gently stroked his cheek, her fingers featherlight. 

He used to be able to entirely fit in her arms, sleeping peacefully as she would rock him. But now he was far too big for that, and looked far from peaceful. Even unconscious his expression was one of internal agony. She could not soothe his pain anymore than she could blot out the trapped twin suns above with her hands. 

But it did not mean she would not try.

Spires raced as the venom buzzed hornet-like past them. Other vessels would wink by, either speeding to their own destinations or beset by rivals. Bright advertisements that stood for hundreds of meters, wrapped around spires or projected by floating lotus-shaped hologram stabilizers, displayed services and products. Her eyes drifted upwards to observe their serene glow. An elegant Drukhari woman leaned seductively over a fountain, clasping a bottle of honeywhisper, a young man demonstrating the fine grain of violetash, a beautifully worked set of swords for a low price of… 

He stirred, rasping something and shaking his head. 

“Shh, I’m still here,” she whispered softly. He settled back down with a deep sigh. He looked much like his father when his eyes were closed, she thought. It was in the shape of his nose and the cheekbones. When he was awake, his typically cold surly expression ruined any resemblance to his father. 

She wished Aos were with them still rather than the consequences of his actions.

The venom suddenly dropped down, angrily buzzing down to what looked like a lake sized plane of blue smoked glass. There was a prickling sensation on her skin as the blue expanse yawned before them, then a instant of chill before new dazzling lights filled her eyes as the venom emerged from the other side of the gate into a more crowded area of spires even more thickly covered with bright displays and advertisements. The statues of archons and succubi jockeyed for dominance with perfume and poison displays that were wrapped carefully around spires to hide both cunningly hidden weapons along with any defects the spire sustained in the last Dysjunction which Jedza remembered with the same fondness one would have for particularly exciting carnival rides. 

Jedza’s gaze moved forward to see what looked like, for all intents and purposes, a massive hedge maze that had devoured an equally huge colosseum that stood like a proud crown with it’s own short cruelly sharp spires jutting out in a circle.

“Welcome home, Rideric.”

The walk to the entrance of the spire had been a bit difficult. Rideric was more than a head taller than her, and had a bit more weight to him as well. He was leaning heavily against her even as he tried to simultaneously take longer steps than his unused legs were prepared to handle. Part of her found it rather adorable even as they stumble-marched into the carved floral door. Its great thin petals slowly slid downwards with soft clicking sounds to open into a short entry hall which had spiraling green insidious vines growing along its walls. 

They swayed and walked further into a larger room with crystal-fronted cabinets, a low lying table large enough to accommodate twelve people, and various seatings. She hauled her son over to one chaise-lounge and let him tumble onto it, his long limbs sprawled out. His eyes were open and he was staring blankly upwards.

“Well, my dear, I think you’ve become officially a bit too big for me to carry,” she laughed. The laugh was awkward no matter how hard she tried to make it sound genuine. Her son was non-responsive to it which she decided was the best outcome. 

“You must be starving,” she said after a long moment of silence. He did not respond so she continued. “Perhaps something like soup? Liquor? Eating pure solids after so long in the sarcophagus is never a good idea, trust me.” Jedza leaned over to look her son in the eye. There was a slight twitch in his eyelid before he turned his face away from her and covered his eyes. “Stew then,” she nodded. She stood back up and began building a recipe list in her head as she walked out of the large room to go down another hall that descended into a curling flight of stairs carved to resemble leaves and thorns.

Besides pleasing eviscerations and balletic decapitations, Jedza had also used her millennia long life to hone another skill.

Cooking.

A baked tart, a very needy bisque, jams, bread, stews, roasts, soups, spreads, she had collected a massive library of recipes in her years and devoted herself to perfecting each one. It was something to occupy her hands and her mind, a way to entertain and please guests, a method to calm a fussy young Trueborn or lure a absent-minded husband into eating something for once.

She was moving automatically in the large kitchen. There were slaves, of course, but they knew better than to get in her way. Or in her sight. Rideric had always been so fond of heavily spiced stews that burned the whole way down, heavy on the meat and blood. It was like his father, whom Jedza believed would have licked magma if he thought he could survive it. She was already chopping a long flank of meat, going through memorized motions as her mind continued to stew on other things.

The difficult part about motherhood was that there were problems she could not solve with violence. The awful part about widowhood was that she had no one to speak with about these problems. She had always decided that she simply would never think about these issues again. Bury them in the void in her soul and continue on. There was a pot of boiling water that the meat cubes tumbled into and she worked on the vegetables. If Aos wanted to continue his suicidal plan despite all her pleading and threats, then what was it to her? If it was safer for Rideric to stay with his father, then why had she promised him to Khaine? When Rideric fell for that sniveling wretch of an Asuryani, why had she not gone to personally ensure the failure of that marriage? Why had she not asked more about Setanta? Why had she not pressed on Rideric letting her visit his new child, freshly torn from a womb?

She paused, wiping her brow with the back of her wrist as she stared into the large pot. Somehow it was already full of spices and most of the vegetables she needed for it. Rideric was terribly adverse to anything that hadn’t been formerly alive and conscious in his food, much to Jedza’s chagrin. 

She turned back to the cutting board where several fat white tubers laid to grab her knife and start chopping them up.

A wet blade’s edge pressed lightly to her neck.

“Mother, you’ve become lax,” her son’s cold breath washed over her ear. 

He had her there, she would admit. “Perhaps so,” she replied. She did not tense or prepare to strike. “Were you pretending to be tired the entire time?”

“No,” he answered. “But I have a question.”

“I might consider answering if you remove the knife from my neck you naughty child,” she teased softly.

The blade pulled away and she turned to see her son leaning heavily against the counter behind them. She could see the slight tremble in his legs, and the weak grip his hands had as he placed them on the edge of the counter to steady himself. He was in no shape to do much besides empty displays. “How much did you… know?”  
Jedza blinked and cocked her head slightly even though her throat had suddenly grown dry. “Know?”

“About all this ridiculous fate nonsense,” his eyes stared at her with a sharp focus even as he slowly slid down to sit on the floor. “If there’s anyone he would have told. It would be you. Father loved you, after all.”

“He loved you as well, Rideric,” she took a few steps closer to him. 

“Don’t avoid the question.”

She sighed while rocking on her heels briefly. A warm aroma of meat and spice wrapped around them. “Not as much as you think, my child.” She finally said. “He only told me he knew I would leave, even when I told him I would not.”

“But you did leave.”

“I did,” she agreed. “I should have dragged you and him here with me.” 

“So he told you nothing?”

“Nothing more than he felt like telling me,” she turned around back to the pot. “Your father said the threads of fate were always changing, so he could rarely truly commit to one statement or another until it had tied itself into an unbreakable knot. Mummery if you ask me.” But he was her mummer, in the end. “I assume if he had not thought this to be the best option, he would have found a different way. Aos once told me that while life itself was cruel and unfair, we could work with one another to make it a more tolerable experience.” Then she laughed at how ridiculous the notion was. He was old, but such a naive fool in some respects. It was another thing she had found charming about him.

Rideric was silent for a long time. She stirred the stew occasionally but did not look behind herself. 

“It’s done,” she finally announced.

“...Thank you mother.”


	4. Chapter 4

She was in a forest of vein-crystal trees and screaming wraiths with sharp claws of ethereal ice and teeth of cold fire. She flew on not-feet through the branches and around the trunks as the wraiths followed her. 

She screamed for her father, but the howl of the spirits drowned her voice. 

This had always been how it was. She would fly as fast as she could, faster, faster, faster and faster yet towards a distant black horizon that never came any closer. Yet whenever she felt herself approach it, she would reel back in terror as _Something_ beyond it turned its attention towards her.

It was as though the black horizon was a thin trembling barrier that held back something horribly ancient and yearning that waited with rapt attention for them all. It saw her, she knew that somehow. It could **See** her, and it would take her just as lovingly and as painfully as it would take the wraiths that followed her. It was frustrated only by that horizon, that black infinity that she would turn away from and tumble right back into the shrieking horrors that awaited her.

Their hands were strong, catching her and pulling her back into the seething ocean of pain where they tore her flesh from her bones and her bones from her soul and her soul from her mind and her being into little pieces they would dash across all the forest. 

Then she would pick herself back up and begin to run again.

And again.

She begged for them to stop. She tried to not pull herself back together. She curled up into a little ball of nothing to sink into the darkness below but the wraith hunt would dig deep into the not-dirt and pull her out like a weed to tear her apart again.

There was less and less of her. Things were vanishing that she could not pull back into her self. Little sparks of memory that the wraiths devoured or snuffed out. 

She would keep running though. She kept trying to escape. The trees seemed to shiver in her passage and the ground would sometimes vomit up more tendrils of pure gleaming rock to trip her over or encase her.

There was whispering, sometimes.

Very soft, very faint. But somehow she could hear it above the bloodthirsty cries. It called to her using a name that might have belonged to her. She did not know anymore. If she followed it, the wraiths would not follow her. But the voice would sometimes disappear, and they would come back. They found her.

She was strewn across the glade of the dead once again, pieces of a child dashed across in a mess of spiritual gore. 

The whispering seemed to be like silken threads that wrapped around the chunks of her being to pull her into a shambling mess of broken memory and half-dissolved identity. She remembered someone, yes. They were important. He was important. She had to go back to him. He was waiting for her. She would run back to him and then everything would be right again.

As the cold dagger nails tore again she held onto that thought with a viciousness and stubbornness that her remains could coalesce around. She wanted more than anything else to be back with her father with his cold eyes and warm arms.

She would return to him.

The whispering said so.

Suddenly as the screaming wild hunt began to fade, they surged forth one more time in enraged denial of their prey escaping as a crashing wave of glass and memories that swallowed her up before a spear of shadows stabbed through her tattered self and pulled her free into the distant black horizon.

Now she was dreaming.

She was dying in them, nightmares that scraped along her wounded mind. But it was not her, really. She was Vimariel, who had loved to paint birds on her walls and had died being torn apart by strange small women in baroque armor. Or she was Kemador who enjoyed singing and was writing a new song when his world had been suddenly engulfed by flames. Celerie, who was walking a simple path of willing servitude when an accident misstep sent her plummeting too fast and too far to be saved. There were so many nightmares, and in each one she was dying. Not her, but someone whose memory wrapped her up like a sticky web. It dragged her beneath howling greenskins, metallic behemoth people with fists that splattered skulls. Flesh, bones, armor turned to nothing in searing green lights. Acidic stomach contents sloughing off skin from muscle. She was killed, again, and again, again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again-

She woke up finally to the sound of her father’s voice. It was distant and muffled as though her ears were full of fluid. Her eyes burned. Everything was too sharp. The light was too bright. The colors were too vivid. The sounds were becoming louder and louder like a roaring monster behind a shuddering door. Her heart heaved with quick steps that sent blood spinning fast through her veins. Her skin was cold and slimy in a way that made her want to slip her entire skeleton out just to flee the sensation. It was too much. Too much all at once. She opened her mouth but nothing came out but a thick clear fluid that tasted like cleaning chemicals. 

A black masked thing leaned towards her, too-bright lights catching on its too-shiny surface and her heart twisted in her chest as it reached for her with two sets of gnarled hands. She weakly held up her hands while shrieking soundlessly for her father. Suddenly the thing was far away from her, a large person-shaped black mark upon the wall. 

Then she saw her father and he was more beautiful and more terrible than she had ever seen him before. He was coming towards her with with his pale arms stretching out forever and his void-blue eyes wide and wet and she could see each eyelash and every twitch of muscle beneath his pallid skin and it was too much too much too much too much… the world was dissolving into a sleepy blackness right as he was close enough to touch. 

After what seemed like an eternity or two she was able to awaken. She did not remember actually sleeping, and while she had the feeling that something terrible had happened she could not recall anything of it. Her body felt frustratingly heavy and the thick warm blanket on her was impossible for her to move. She was on a soft bed that smelled like floral mints and felt like there was a faint air of distant discomfort she could not place.

She opened dream-gummed eyes slowly and stared at a wall of white that shivered in her sight. Then after a moment her eyes focused and she realized it was a wall of white flowers gently rustling in some unfelt breeze. There was a long table with various empty bottles and cosmetics sitting on it, then beside that was a large chair with a blanket unceremoniously draped on it. She turned her head to find the wall of white flowers surrounded her except for what looked to her like a strange oval shaped cut out of green. Besides the table was a large black colored wardrobe, a delicately carved chest that looked big enough for two of her to fit in, and a rocking dragon. Above lazily spun soft lights that looked like the glimmer of tiny fairies. What a strange garden, she thought.

“What do you mean that the ports can’t be removed?” Her father’s voice was hushed, but somehow she could still hear it from beyond the green. “It doesn’t need to be automated.”

“On the contrary, I would not trust you in your drunkenness to remember to administer the dosages at the correct time,” another voice replied. This one was drier, colder, and more malicious than anything she had heard before in her life. If it were not for how weak she felt she would have crawled right under the bed to hide.

“Excuse me?”

“Listen, dear grandson, would it not give you peace of mind to know you do not need to worry about this? All you must consider is refilling the tubes. She will, if my calculations are correct, outgrow the need for stabilizers eventually.”

“What did you do, Vitiron?”

“A shell of flesh and careful osseo-crafting so she retains the appearance you seem so attached to, the organs are of course grown with the intention of fitting a smaller body. It is not hard to shape the material body to fit a… different species form. The difficult part is perfecting what nature had left lacking!” the voice replied in irritation. “All the best art is experimental, grandchild. Not that you would understand anything about that.”

“You and your damn art.”

Suddenly the green oval seemed to melt away and a tall lithe figure swept inside with a huff. She sank a little deeper under the blanket to peek out over the edge as she watched her father hiss and mutter to himself while carrying a tray with a large flask and a carved crystalline cup that made her eyes sting a little as the light caught on it as a web of little glittery prisms. 

He slunk over to the table and began moving empty bottles away to make space for the tray. She watched him with wide eyes. There was something different, she realized. Not that his movements no longer looked so fast and rapid, or that his hair seemed a bit shorter. The ear piercings? No. She looked harder.

There was something wrong.

She could see something past the flesh, and that something was dimmed ever so slightly from what she could faintly recall. It was a coldly glowing flame that existed beyond the material that her physical eyes saw. But when she tried to dig deeper to compare her memories to what she saw it was as useful as diving in mud. As though all her memories were toys that had been left out in the elements for years and now only had the vaguest shapes left to them beneath the dirt. Something was missing on him and she could not piece together what it was. 

Then he turned around. 

He was holding the flask and the cup in his hands but his eyes were entirely focused on her. They looked fever bright even in the dull light and his hands trembled ever so minutely. Then he took the few steps to close the distance between himself and the bed and leaned his long body down so that his hair pooled upon the bed as he stared at her face. 

“You’re awake, Fann,” he spoke so quietly as though he might shatter her if he dare raise his voice any louder.

She nodded while sinking further into the blanket’s warmth. 

He set the cup down and began to reach out for her but his hand stopped just above her face. “You’ve been… asleep… for such a long time,” he breathed. 

She furrowed her brow, “why?” She did not feel particularly tired all of a sudden. Even though the blanket was very comfortable and very heavy she managed to struggle out of it enough to look up at her father better. 

“You were very sick, Fanncridhe,” he said softly and he finally rested his hand on her cheek. “How do you feel?”

She thought about it for a moment. Besides her body feeling something like jelly, her mind like mud, and a pervasive sense of distant agony that was not her own, she felt fine. She managed to move one arm to rest on her chest and paused to feel the thump of her heart beneath. “My heart feels fast,” she finally decided to say. But it did not feel _that_ fast, had she been asleep for so long she had forgotten what her own heartbeat felt like?

Her father laughed and her heart happily leapt. “That’s good. It means you feel better,” he moved so that he was sitting on the bed with her, holding the crystal cup again and the flask. Fann weakly shifted so she could lean on him. He smelled like minty flowers. He opened the flask and poured the contents into the cup and she was immediately hit with a strange warm metallic smell that made her wrinkle her nose. She looked at her father to ask a question but it was immediately pushed from her mind by a realization. 

“Your necklace is gone!” She slapped one hand jelly like on his chest where she was used to an amber stone resting. It had been a pretty stone, glimmering like fire when the light hit it, and it warmly pulsed when he had let her hold it. The memory was very clear. She had been sitting with him in a much smaller room and he had placed its oval shape into her hand while he was cleaning a cut on his arm. It had felt much like holding his hand did. 

He laughed again. “Someone else needed it.”

“But it’s important!”

“It is, that’s why someone needed it,” he replied. He looked back down at her for a long moment and then held the cup out to her. “You need this more than I do right now, I think.” 

“What is it?” She asked as she took the cup in hands she had to force to wrap around it. 

“Medicine,” he explained, stroking her hair with his free hand. “You will need medicine for a little while longer.”

She looked down into the cup. The contents were a dark red, sloshed strangely, and there was something strange about it. It repelled her. But then again, all medicine was supposed to be unpleasant to her knowledge. Fann looked back at her father and found he was tipping the rest of the flask’s contents into his mouth and wished she had the same ability to drink anything. So she chugged what was in her cup and managed to resist the urge to gag long enough to swallow the last mouthful. She immediately set the cup down and covered her mouth as she felt a fuzziness spread beneath her skin.

“It’s an acquired taste,” her father commented. 

“I don’t want to have it,” she mumbled. Everything felt a bit more muddy and her vision had faded. She could no longer see the cold flame in her father.

He gestured to the room, “do you like it?” 

She looked back at the wall of pale flowers and the scant furniture placed around near the walls. As she did she could feel her father’s arms begin to wrap around her delicately.

“My mother always said that children need to be surrounded by beauty, and I thought how nice would it be if you felt like you woke up in a garden?” Her father continued.

“It’s very pretty,” she agreed softly as she was pulled to him. “You’re pretty too! Like the flowers!” She added quickly, patting his chest as he tucked her head beneath his chin.

“You’re the most beautiful flower here, Fann,” he said gently. She could not see his face but she could feel the tick in his jaw. Then he spoke very quietly to himself, but not so quietly she could not hear him, “I won’t fail again, Fanncridhe. No more weakness.”

She wanted to ask him what he was talking about, but she felt wet drops in her hair and was pulled deeper into his embrace until he had blocked out all the light around her. The world had shrunken down into being just him and her, and despite her assurances to herself that she was not tired she found herself sleepily curling up in that comforting darkness of her father. 

This time she had no nightmares.


End file.
